


you're not going that way

by speedboat



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Drug Abuse, Dysfunctional Relationships, M/M, TW: addiction, this has substantially less chill than i planned, tw: relapse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 04:46:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3923458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speedboat/pseuds/speedboat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Kent?" Eric says, his voice very, very small when someone, not sleepy enough for three a.m. Las Vegas time, answers the phone.</p><p>Kent's voice shutters when he asks why Eric is calling, but it's the voice of a jealous ex-lover, Eric decides with finality, unable to consider the other choice.<br/>"How did you know when Jack was using?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're not going that way

**Author's Note:**

> i have no chill.

Eric knows there's a disconnect, can see it in Jack's glazed-over eyes the minute he walks into the Haus the morning before the Bruins play the Falconers. He's quiet, reticent, and he rolls over so his back is to Eric as they try to squeeze together on Eric's extra-long twin in Johnson's old room that night. It would be more economic to spoon, they would both be able to stay on the bed without someone sliding off the nylon mattress, and yet, Jack is sleeping hunched in on himself. He hadn't said very much at dinner. He'd looked sweaty and sick, and Eric hadn't pressed the issue.

 

Eric's worry stays at a simmer until he sees the tiny white pill sandwiched between the light fixture and the wall in his bathroom when he gets up for a glass of water. It all falls so horribly, horribly into place, and Eric finds himself (guiltily) unplugging Jack's phone from the wall next to the air mattress he'd elected to sleep on (again, with the spooning avoidance). He scrolls through the contacts, looking first at the Ks, then the Ps, until he finds what he's looking for.

 

"Kent?" Eric says, his voice very, very small when someone, not sleepy enough for three a.m. Las Vegas time, answers the phone.

"Zimms?"

"No," Eric says, and hopes very much he isn't about to find out that Jack's been sleeping with Kent, that that's what this whole 'introspective' thing is about. "Eric Bittle."

Kent's voice shutters when he asks why Eric is calling, but it's the voice of a jealous ex-lover, Eric decides with finality, unable to consider the other choice. 

"How did you know when Jack was using?"

Kent lets out a low moan. 

" _Fuck_ ," he mutters. "Bittle, you could not have any worse timing."

"Sorry," Eric says, reminded of just how little he likes Kent Parson. "He's just being really distant and his eyes are kind of glazed over."

"Probably just his normal self, then," Kent says, going for humor and missing by a mile.

"I know," Eric laughs nervously. "I'm probably just being stupid, I just…I found a pill, too."

Kent is quiet for several beats. 

"He probably isn't," Kent says, sounding as uneasy as Eric feels.

"You're right," Eric agrees. "G'night, Parse." The nickname is thick on his tongue.

"Night, Bittle," Kent says, and hangs up, leaving Eric stewing in a pile of what-ifs.

 

 

Kent Parson is in the Haus kitchen when Eric gets back from class one day two weeks later, eating a plate of pie and looking thoughtfully at all the pictures on the wall. 

"Kent, what are you—"

"He's on something," Kent says. "I played him three nights ago, and he was totally fucked up after."

So the Falcs and the Aces had played three nights ago. And Jack hadn't talked to Eric about it. Come to think of it, Jack hadn't talked to Eric until last night, a brief, harried attempt at phone sex cut short by Jack's roommate coming back from a night out.

"But he's _clean_ ," Eric says, unwilling to let the signs line up in his head. There's another explanation. There has to be.

"He told you that?"

Eric nods.

"He told me that the night he took my virginity. He said he wanted to be sober for it."

"And he wasn't?"

"He was so high he locked up that night. I tried to pull him in the night after I—" Kent covers his mouth with a hand for a second, a tell. "I gave up a part of me, and he couldn't even stay sober for it when I asked him to. That's who you're dealing with."

"But the Jack I know would—"

"We know the same Jack, Bittle, this isn't like Jekyll/Hyde. It's not like he'd wake up one day a different person and abuse pills."

"But he wasn't—"

"He was a great hockey player and a faithful son and a— a boyfriend while he was on those pills Bitty. They're a part of him. Not all of him, but it's not a different Jack that you know."

"He was in a _dark place_ back then," Eric insists, unready to hear all the things about the Jack Zimmermann that Kent knows. Knew. He knows the angle Parse is coming from, he'd heard the Epikegster fiasco in full, and, as a person who was also deeply attracted to Jack, he could hear it in Kent's voice.He doesn't have to listen to Kent Parson, he shouldn't listen to Kent Parson. This is a Bad Idea, but it's also from an era in Jack's life he refuses to talk about with Eric. He says it's pointless to focus on past mistakes. And Eric doesn't push him. 

 

(Because that's what Kent Parson would do— push him. And Eric doesn't want to be the next Kent.)

 

But he wonders. And he knows he might never get the full truth, Jack's truth. And here Kent is, like the serpent holding up the apple, offering to tell him all the things he doesn't know, offering to bring him closer to knowing Jack. 

 

But Eric knows it's wrong, he really does, and he says, "Look, Kent. I know you came here to stir shit up." (The curse makes him sound like he's eleven and trying to impress a big kid on the playground, and he winces, feeling his resolve crumbling.) "But I'm secure in my relationship with Jack, and nothing you say will change that."

"Look, Bittle," Kent runs a hand through his hair. " _You_ called _me_. Whatever. You win, okay, you get the giant favor of being _intimate_ with Jack Zimmermann. I don't want to step on toes, I already fucked him up enough the last time I came here."

"Yet you're back," Eric says, sounding steelier than he feels. "Fu-Messing with his sobriety, trying to worm your way in the middle, telling me all the scandalous stories about how I don't know what a raging drug addict my boyfriend is."

Kent's fist slams unexpectedly on the counter, and Eric jumps, aware for the first time that he's alone in the Haus with him.

"Do you get that, though, Eric?" Kent asks, looking him right in the eye. "That Jack is literally a recovering drug addict? That he's two years sober?"

"Two…?" A pool of dread seeps slowly into Eric's stomach. 

"He called me all fucked up after playoffs his sophomore year at three in the morning. I have literally seen him have a drug-induced seizure. He's not… I know it seems like he's a totally different guy, Bittle, I really do get it, but the old Jack is still there."

"What do you want to do, bring him back out?" Eric snaps, trying to blot the new information that Jack had slipped mere months before he met him from his mind. "Why are you telling me this? Why can't you just leave him alone? You're the one who got him in this mess, haven't you ruined his life enough?"

Kent lets out a harsh, high sound that could probably be considered a laugh if it weren't so bitter.

"He told you _I_ got _him_ hooked on Valium?" Kent says, and his eyes are shining with tears now, a mirthless laugh seemingly dragged from his throat. "He really said it was me who did that to him?"

Eric steps back from the counter, wondering if Kent is really, truly losing it. 

"No—" Kent is gasping now, red and deranged in Eric's kitchen, leaning on Bessie. Eric wants him out, out of his life and Jack's life and their life _together_ for good. "That's too good, Bittle. What exactly did he say?"

"He said it was a," Eric searches for the language, his voice small. "A culture? Of… unhealthy attitudes towards pain?"

Kent's stopped the hollow laughter at least, but he cracks a maniacal grin. "A culture, huh? It was ingrained in him, I suppose. From an early age. By his…" Kent lets out a giggle that sends a chill down Eric's spine. "Father?"

Silence.

"Jack came to QMJHL already hooked on Valium. For the record. I introduced him to vodka, I guess, but that was when I thought he was, like, normal. Before I knew about the pills."

Eric is quiet, picking at a hangnail on his pinky. 

"Look, I don't give a fuck," Kent says, suddenly serious. "Really, have him. But I just want you to get it through your skull, Bittle, if nothing else, that Jack's not, like, a better person than anybody else. I know it seems like he's—" he draws in a sharp breath. "That you're the only one who can fix him. That he's different from some meth addict in prison right now."

"He's not—"

"He is, though, Bittle," Kent says. "It doesn't mean that you have to stop seeing him or love him any less than you do now, or whatever. But he's an addict, and the sooner you see it for what it is, the sooner you can do something."

"Just get out of my kitchen," Eric says, suddenly angry. "Get out of my life, stop insinuating that you know anything about me or Jack or our relationship. Do us all a favor, _especially_ him, and get lost."

Kent shrugs in a way that makes Eric grab a wooden spoon from the counter, blind, practically, with rage, and stop just short of throwing it at him. "Whatever you think's best."

" _Leave_ ," Eric says, a threat. Kent raises his hands appeasingly and heads towards the door, to Eric's relief. 

"Look," Kent says, peeking his fucking head back around the door once more. "I was you, a while ago, finding the pills again. He'll lie about anything and everything for those goddamn devils. He'll look right into your eyes and say he isn't using with the things under his tongue."

Eric throws the spoon.

"You call me if it ever gets too bad, though," Kent says casually. "Me and drugged-up Zimms go back a ways."

He closes the door, and the Haus is silent once again.

"He's not," Eric says aloud. "He's not using." 

 

Jack manhandles him into a semi-spoon five days later, curling his whole body around Eric and snuffling into his hair. Eric lays awake, embarrassed that he knows the intimate details of Jack's former sex life, that he actually asked, in some sense, and that Parson gave up the information so readily. He's mostly feeling guilty that he thought Jack was really using again, that Jack would give in, would be so selfish.

 

In the morning, he will catch Jack downing the Valium like Tic-Tacs when he gets up for his early run. He will cry, and ask why, and listen to Jack say it was just one time, it isn't a big deal, he doesn't need help. Jack will disappoint him, he will disappoint Jack. 

 

But they have this, for now. He hums back into Jack's solid body, content to be here, right here, with him forever, if he asked.

 

 

 

 


End file.
